"What happens in Vegas"... Will likely end up on this site. Sorry, Las Vegas Chamber.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Why "TEA Party, Inc." Fears "T Word" Honesty

(They did it again. Of course, they did it again! They're the powers that be who happen to run the state's largest [absolute embarrassment of a] "newspaper". Today, they published another in-house anti-TEI ad. But this time, they posted it on the front page and right under a story boasting about how much money the No on 3 campaign has raised!

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

So we figured today is the perfect day to take a trip down the Nevada Progressive archives and back to June 2012. Let's review why we now have Question 3 on our fall ballot. Let's examine the truth behind the lies being propagated by opponents of The Education Initiative. And let's remember how this whole Question 3 campaign began.)

As we noted yesterday, the corporate margin tax is finally going live. And already, it's making a big splash. And already, the radical right is making noise on how "dangerous" this is.

Anti-tax reform groups, like NPRI, feeling like they have duped and confused middle class citizens go on to state that “research shows there’s little to no correlation between $ and student achievement.” The facts are not on their side though. As the Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project and the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) project have shown, “Research concentrating on class size is important because the findings have largely concluded that smaller class size leads to increases in student achievement, helps to close the minority-majority achievement gap, and has several other long lasting benefits.” Class size reduction though isn’t possible without an increase in the number of teachers in classrooms within a district. Logic tells us that these increases in teacher counts will cost money. Thereby showing that increased financial investments in schools most certainly does increase student achievements, as well as providing other socially relevant benefits.

For decades, the likes of NPRI have deceived Nevadans into thinking we could get something for nothing. But in the last decade, we've had to learn the hard way that we really can't get "money for nothing and chicks for free". Instead, our penchant for rewarding tax evasion has only caused us unnecessary pain and suffering as we've failed to invest in the public infrastructure (like public schools) necessary for growing a sustainable and diversified economy.

Even Ralston, who sometimes wants to like NPRI almost as much as he hates the initiative process, couldn't stay mum on NPRI's idiotic attempt to stifle reasonable discussion on badly needed tax reform. And that's what has "Tea Party, Inc." running scared. The frustration is real, the need for reform is real, and now the first step in building a lasting solution to our chronic budget AND economic development woes is real. They're trying desperately to stifle this, but their days of bullying Nevada into remaining a failed state (just so their corporate patrons can reap the rewards of our suffering) are numbered.